Archive for August, 2009

Finally feeling better, I went shopping this weekend with L for maternity clothes! We went to our relatively new neighborhood mall, The Shops at Wiregrass, which I might add that I hate.

(Note: the mall is one of these outdoor “lifestyle centers” that smacks of ill-conceived new urbanism. It’s setup to resemble an ambling street, complete with a gently curving “road” with on-street parking. Of course, the “road” only leads between the parking lot at one end and a parking lot at another. This layout means the “sidewalks” are relatively narrow, causing pedestrian traffic jams as the moronic residents of New Tampa stop to inexplicably gawk at The Gap or whatever, as if it were an unknown and foreign destination. Worse yet, it’s out-of-doors: a hot and humid mass of concrete and asphalt that leaves you a sweaty, sticky mess 9 months out of the year. Give me a good, old-fashioned air-conditioned shopping center a la Mallrats. But, I digress).

However, given its proximity and my laziness, I didn’t want to drive to a more distant destination. Plus, it has a Motherhood Maternity in addition to the department stores that sell prego-wear.

I’m a guy who doesn’t mind shopping. But, I have to say: I did not enjoy shopping for maternity clothing. We started at the JC Penney. It’s not the sort of place L usually shops for clothing at, but any port will do in a storm, I suppose. We actually found some decent pants and jeans there. Better still, they were on sale for 50% off. That made the average price $15-20 per pair. Sweet.

Next, we went to Motherhood Maternity. For me, this is when things went downhill. I was the only dude in the store (it seems that most pregnant women like to shop with their mothers, not husbands). I was inundated with “color commentary” about all sorts of body parts: “my thighs are disgusting,” “I used to be a member of the ‘tiny tity committee’ before they blew up” (blew up? that can’t be good., “my ass is sooo huge,” and so forth. I listened to women talk about spreading their nether regions with cocoa butter and cocoa oil (both are best, it seems). At some point, I started longing for a trip to Victoria’s Secret, my previously least favorite place to shop with L.

I don’t think L loved the experience either. She had a sort of a “deer in headlights” look about her. This was especially true when they strapped the plus-three-months belly onto her. Upon the sight of herself in the mirror, her eyes grew wide to the size of half dollars. I thought she was going to let out a scream. And, she only managed to stammer out answers to the salesperson’s questions. Happily, she found some very nice shirts. I said we should buy them all.

So, all told we managed to get: 4 pairs of pants/jeans and about 7 shirts. Plus, some sort of undergarment and cocoa butter/oil. The told cost came to around $250. Not too bad.

While walking back to the car, L stopped abruptly in the parking lot and informed me we’d order the rest of her maternity clothing online. It seems the strap-on faux belly and talk of thighs was too much for her too. Fine with me.

P.S. I’m posting this entry from 34,000 feet while flying from Atlanta to Dallas. I have a one-day trip that started with me leaving the house at 3:30 this morning. I’m scheduled to land back in Tampa around midnight tonight… long day! The WiFi service on planes is pretty cool… I’m becoming addicted.

Before we left for vacation a couple of weeks ago, L felt like she was getting sick and decided to stay home for a day and rest. She was lucky and able to shake the bug. I managed to pick it up too, but I fought it off during our cruise and thought I had it licked too.

Unfortunately, I was wrong. It came back with a vengeance last week while I was traveling, and it really hit me over the weekend. I’m honestly not sure if it was just a bad cold (possible as I didn’t have a fever), some “regular” variant of the flu (possible as it seemed worse than a regular cold), or a full blown case of “bacon lung” (possible because I’ve read that you can have pork-itosis without having a fever). It seems that doctors have largely stopped testing to confirm cases of the swine flu, as long as you’re doing ok.

Of course, there are numerous media reports about how dangerous the swine flu is for pregnant women. Great! So, we’ve been trying to keep the house and me disinfected while I’ve battled this thing off. I’m (finally!) starting to feel a good deal better, but I’m not 100% yet. I’m hoping to be back into normal form by the weekend (as last weekend was a washout and we’ve got stuff to do). We also had to cancel dinner plans with some good friends, which we’ll need to reschedule for later this month as well.

We returned home on Sunday after an enjoyable and relaxing vacation. The Alaskan cruise was perfect given the circumstances — right amount of activity, relaxation, etc. L continues to feel and do fine. We’re now into the 2nd trimester (week #14 today). And it’s so far, so good.

I’m back off to Minneapolis this week for work (left this afternoon). It’s been a hectic past few weeks for me in terms of travel. I **think** I’ll have been home a total of 5 or 6 days in the past 4+ weeks. Fortunately, I should have a two week break after this trip.